When

Where

Meet our presenters

Lifelong social change advocates Jim Tull and Karina Lutz are thrilled to be offering this profound workshop at Listening Tree Cooperative, an intentional community on 33 beautiful acres in Chepachet, RI.

Midwifing the Great Turning

Work that Reconnects

Deep Ecology Workshop

with Karina Lutz and Jim Tull

Listening Tree Cooperative

Chepachet, RI

Burnout is endemic to social and environmental justice advocates as unstable social systems worldwide seem to have lost credibility, effectiveness, or their veneer of sanity. We can look at it as "the Great Unraveling"--that systems are collapsing. Or we can see that unsustainable systems must change, and some unraveling is necessary for the scale of change we need at this point. To move towards a healthy, peaceful, and life-sustaining culture will require transformation of our social systems and structures. This "Great Turning" will also require shifting our awareness: to see in systems--how life flows and relates--and to reconnect with life itself.

Jim Tull and Karina Lutz offer “The Work that Reconnects” workshop to remedy burnout and revive our energies to work toward restoring the world. This perspective-changing, life-affirming experiential learning process helps us face, feel, and make sense of our increasing and multiple environmental and social disasters and future threats. We'll work to reclaim the energy for action that is thwarted when we deny our emotional responses to these crises. Our responses may feel difficult, at first, but as we face them in a group of mutual support, we realize how natural, healthy, and motivating they can be.

Starting with gratitude for living in earth, we'll move into honoring our pain for the state of the world, then see with new eyes--looking at the world through a holistic, systems-based and life-affirming paradigm--and finally end with exercises to help us go forth into the world with renewed passion, clarity, and a sense of ‘power with’--instead of the prevailing ‘power over.’ This process, developed by Joanna Macy and colleagues, is called the spiral of the Work that Reconnects. Developed in response to the nuclear threat and environmental degradation, Jim and Karina also apply it to social justice issues. It's all connected, truly.